Republican leaders have seen their plan to politically exploit sectarian tensions in Belfast badly backfire, Northern Ireland First Minister David Trimble claimed today.
The Ulster Unionist leader, who faces a difficult meeting of his party's 860-member ruling council next month on whether to continue power sharing with Sinn Fein, accused republican paramilitaries of deliberately stoking up sectarian tensions in flashpoint areas this summer.
Mr Trimble, who earlier this week visited loyalist communities affected by violence along the Short Strand in east Belfast, also claimed republicans had lost control of the situation.
"While there is violence coming from loyalist paramilitaries and we have criticised that, the basic underlying problem is the fact that republican paramilitaries decided to hot up the interfaces this summer and use it as a political tool to attack the new policing arrangements and SDLP participation on the Policing Board," he said.
"It was a cynical political manoeuvre. It has backfired on them."
Ulster Unionist party officers yesterday agreed in Co Fermanagh to reconvene their ruling council following demands by grassroots members to reconsider their policy of power sharing with Sinn Fein.
PA